This Is Paradise Quotes

“Hana is a vacation spot for the Big island chiefs,' Becky said. She always spoke of history in the present tense, which never failed to unsettle him. To him, history was not available for reintroductions and reliving but access only via careful and protracted study. For Becky, however, thee past and present existing in the same moment. In her memory the two met, and through their meeting, she layered them, until the past and present were like ocean and sky, without noticeable boundary,”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“He wanted to ask if she had forgiven him or just stopped counting the myriad ways he had disappointed her. Maybe the were the same thing.”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“On the mainland Pili knew who he was: successful marketing magnate, occasional club favorite, excellent dinner companion. On island, he was none of those. He was reduced to simply being his father's son.”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“Her entire life Grace has suspected men know things because they think them, and women know things because they feel them.”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“Good fathers know when to lie to their children.”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“...Because you want to cry each time you see a man like that crying, you wrap your arms around his waist and lean into him. You let him be a man. You let yourself be a woman who needs his strength.”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“He wanted her to feel the weight of their future, too, the hope of it and the moment of it folding over on the present.”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“How about this: I love you like a wave loves sand'.
He thought of hw the ocean unfurls n every direction on the beach and then retracts like a gigantic, curling tongue. 'Hungrily?'
'Powerfully.”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“He was local ad she wasn't. But di that matter? Was local being from a place, or just of it?”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“My cousin can chant back twenty-five generations. That's what it means to be from a place. And yet, you're from Minnesota and I'm from Vegas. How can that be?”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories

“No matter where you are, being Hawaiian is cool. But in some ways, I think it was harder growing up Hawaiian and not being here. That sense of displacement, of never quite fitting in.”
― Kristiana Kahakauwila, This Is Paradise: Stories